Thursday, April 7, 2016

Happy Birch Days

The Bide-A-While birch syrup family portrait.

It may very well be that we have reached peak birch here at
Bide-A-While.The sap goes on, though
sluggishly, with afternoon highs just scraping up into the mid-30s.Yesterday I gathered “ice birch”—the sap in
the bags and containers was half frozen, so I poured the liquid portion into my
collection container and left the ice behind, thinking that the liquid sap was
probably more concentrated in
sugar.It’s on the woodstove now, and
getting right down there.

I’ve also been reading a good bit about birch syrup making,
though sources are not abundant.There
are some commercial producers in Alaska,
and there have been some official studies of best practices.It’s all pretty interesting, and useful,
since I’ve been proceeding on a trial and error basis, leaning toward the
latter. This is a good compendium of articles on birch.

Pour the sap into a cauldron and light a small fire....

I would have thought that Magnus Nilsson’s massive new tome,
The Nordic Cook Book, would show some traditional or novel uses for birch
syrup; instead, it has no mention of it, at all.But in Nilsson’s Fäviken cookbook he does include
a “recipe” for birch syrup, along with a couple of interesting
observations.One, he notes that part of
the distinctive taste of birch syrup comes from the fact that not only the
sugars, but also the trace minerals found in the sap are concentrated in the
syrup making process—and since birch sap must be reduced twice, or more, as
much as maple sap, that’s bound to have an impact.I think it’s part of what contributes to the
savory edge that birch syrup has, even while it is intensely sweet.The other, technical note Nilsson makes is
that birch syrup contains carboxylic acid, which gives it “outstanding
freshness.”You can’t miss that acidic
edge in tasting birch syrup; I just didn’t know what the particular acid was
called.

Oddly, none of the recipes in the rest of the book includes
birch syrup.Nilsson says that he uses
it as one would balsamic vinegar, and I’d been thinking along similar lines,
wondering what birch syrup would taste like drizzled over vanilla ice cream, as
reduced balsamic is sometimes used.

Well, I need wonder no longer.I fixed up a little late breakfast snack of
vanilla ice cream (nothing special, just Wisconsin favorite Cedar Crest)
anointed with a couple teaspoons of birch syrup and then a few grains of coarse
gray sea salt.Oh, my.Why didn’t I think of this sooner?It was really superb, with elements both of a
root beer float and a butterscotch sundae.If you can get your hands on some birch syrup, this would be the perfect
way to end an elegant dinner party.Your
guests will surely have tasted nothing like it.This was actually my first foray into using birch syrup in a
sweet/dessert preparation.I’m eager for
more explorations.

If you’re interested in making your own birch syrup, you
should pay attention to just how big an impact the way you reduce the sap makes on
the final product.In my first attempts
I had rather a lot of sap, and I started the reduction in my homemade
evaporator (the legendary half-assed sap contraption).It really boiled hard, and sap caramelized
(not to say burned, though probably
some did) on the sides of the pan as the sap reduced, and this caramel got
washed back into the sap, adding color and a variety of flavors.As a result, that syrup was molasses-dark and
very strong in flavor.One of the
articles I found online cautioned against making birch syrup this way, saying
it would come out with a scorched flavor.But I don’t think my dark syrup tastes bad or scorched.It is very, very different from the lighter
syrups I’m making this year, but it has its uses, too.

This year, with moderate sap flow and thus manageable
amounts of sap to deal with, I’ve done all the reduction inside, first on the
woodstove, then on the range, as previously mentioned.And then with a few gallons I did in entirely
on the woodstove, so that it never boiled at all, just slowly, slowly reduced
as the water evaporated from the sap.You can see what a difference that makes in the color of the final
syrup.The taste, as well, is mellower,
but it still has that fresh acidity and good complexity.

Three 2016 batches. I should start a paint line of birch syrup hues....

Fun stuff!I feel
like a bit of a pioneer in upper Midwest small
batch birch syrup making.If anyone else
out there has tried his or her hand at this, I’d love to here about your
experiences.I will keep the home fires
burning in the ever busy woodstove, and carry on with kitchen explorations, as
well.If you have any thoughts about how
to deploy birch syrup in cooking, I love to hear those, as well.

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Trout Caviar is an online journal that celebrates local, seasonal foods and the people who grow, raise, make, sell, cook and savor them.
Our local foods are those that come from Minnesota and Wisconsin, but we're devotees of authentic flavors wherever they arise. I'm Brett Laidlaw and I write the text and take the photos seen here. My co-conspirator in this endeavor is Mary Eckmeier, wife, Pastry Goddess, Plate-Licker, Soup-Smiler. We used to run a home-based farmers market bakery called Real Bread, currently in hiatus.
Bide-A-Wee, that's our tiny off-grid cabin on 20 rustic acres in beautiful northern Dunn County, Wisconsin.